Before and Again

by Barbara Delinsky

  Wondering if that could actually happen, what it might look like, whether the truck would be spattered with blood the way my SUV had been that awful fall day, I barely heard the door open. My engine was humming but the heat hadn’t begun to blow, so I didn’t even feel the cold it let in. But I felt the hands. They were large, one on my back, one on my shoulder, tentative but purposeful. And I heard the voice.

  “Breathe,” it said with a kindness it shouldn’t have had after what I had done, the pain and the loss. “Breathe,” it repeated, frightened now.

  I tried. Really, I did.

  But it wasn’t until he said it a third time, with rising panic, Breathe, Maggie, that I managed to drag in enough air to begin to recover. I was breathing shallowly, ragged but consistent, when he pried my hands from the wheel and turned me into his jacket, where he held me, rubbing my back.

  The jacket smelled of a Devon March night way more than of Edward. But the hands that returned to my back had an Edward feel, and the voice was his. It murmured words of encouragement that blurred together, because individual words didn’t matter, only the tone, which was filled with caring and concern.

  “I’m okay,” I finally managed, but it was another minute before I managed to ease back, only then realizing that my gloved fingers were folded over the edge of his pockets. Muscle memory? It had to be. Taking them back, I refolded them on the wheel. “I’m fine,” I said and drew in a long, only mildly stuttering breath to prove it to him. I looked at my purse on the seat, the heat panel, the rearview, anywhere but at him. “I’m leaving now.”

  He didn’t argue. After a beat, he stepped back and closed the door. Once he had backed off enough so that he could watch me pull out, I put the truck in reverse and moved. I had no idea whether Kevin was still back under the gaslight, and I didn’t look. I simply focused on breathing, driving, getting home.

  * * *

  Liam was in my living room. His new heavy boots lay just inside the door; his new flannel shirt and sturdy jeans covered his body on my sofa; his new Ragg socks warmed his feet, which were propped on the edge of my coffee table. Jonah was beside him, acknowledging my arrival by opening one eye before closing it and going back to sleep, but the cats came running.

  “That was fun,” Liam said. His mouth moved, but not much else. He was satisfied, but clearly tired. He had earned that right.

  I wasn’t sure I had earned a thing, but I must have been subconsciously holding it together for the sake of getting safely home, because one foot in the door and I was emotionally wiped. Toeing off my boots, I crouched down to greet the cats and just kept on going until my butt hit the floor. The problem wasn’t only my legs. My whole body felt drained. It often did, after one of my chest episodes—panic episodes, okay, it was panic, when the past came rushing back so fast that emotions clogged my veins, slowing the blood flow—but this one had been extreme.

  The last thing I wanted to do now was talk.

  Correction. The last thing I wanted to do was to think about what Edward had said. And here was Liam, so at home in my home and, just then, the perfect distraction.

  “You did good,” I said with a hand on each cat.

  “So did you, Maggie.” He shifted his head on the back of the sofa just enough to aim his apparently-not-so-tired voice my way. “I kept thinking you’d be in to check up on me, but every time I looked around, there you were with someone else. It’s like you know absolutely everyone in town, which I guess makes sense, small town and all, but you didn’t have so many friends growing up.”

  “I had friends.”

  “Not so many.”

  “Maybe you just never saw.”

  “True.” He frowned, pensive. “Five years is a big difference. Why do you think Mom waited so long to have a second?”

  “Two miscarriages,” I said, but if my brother heard, he didn’t seem touched. I’m not sure a guy could grasp the sense of failure that a woman felt when she had a miscarriage.

  Sure enough, he babbled right on. “When I was in elementary, you were in middle. When I was in middle, you were in high. When I was in high, you were gone. You never brought friends home.”

  No, I hadn’t brought friends home. My mother worked, and although I helped out, dinners were an effort, making an extra mouth an added imposition. Once I got to college, friends usually lived in another state, which would have meant spending the night with us, which would have been just as unwelcome. My father liked his evenings quiet.

  Liam rolled on. “You had friends at the wedding, but we didn’t know them, and anyway, they were different from the ones tonight.”

  “Artists,” I said with a smile. “Artists are unique.”

  “Your friends were just bizarre.”

  “They were not. Their artistry was just different from yours, and you weren’t an artist back then, so you had nothing to say to my friends. Devonites are diverse,” I added, returning to the present as Liam’s phone dinged. “They’re good people.”

  He glanced at the phone but set it down again.

  “Edward,” I muttered.

  “Oh-ho, no. Edward’s past texting me. He’d text you directly.”

  “Then who?”

  “The guy is totally hung up on you, Maggie. He was with you more than not. Didn’t you notice?”

  To answer him, I’d either have had to acknowledge it or lie, but I didn’t want to discuss Edward at all. “Okay, so who’s texting—uh, oops, calling you?” I asked as his phone jangled in a different way. I had heard both of his ringtones enough by now to tell them apart.

  Liam glanced at the screen and, this time, gave a sharp grunt before setting it aside unanswered.

  “Someone you met tonight?” I asked. “Someone you liked? Didn’t like? Butted heads with?” I couldn’t imagine who that might be—actually, I could. “Oh, cripes. Lizzie Steele?”

  Liam made a face. “What is the problem with that woman?”

  “Loneliness. She’s thirty, give or take, moved from Pittsburgh—”

  “—to Devon two years ago to market organic breakfast muffins in a smaller, more upscale community, blah, blah, blah.” He had clearly heard the same story the rest of us had. “Is she self-absorbed or what?”

  “She’s self-absorbed.”

  “How are her muffins?” asked the chef.

  “They’re fine.”

  “As good as Mom’s?”

  “No.” Hex sauntered over, so I scratched his scruff lightly enough to make him purr. I didn’t want to think of Mom again. But then I thought of Liam’s phone. “Does she call you?”

  “Mom? She did when I first left. I was in New Orleans for Mardi Gras, so she could actually hear the noise of it. I told her I’d be traveling up the East Coast. I said it was a research trip. I said I had to broaden my perspective on food.”

  “Sounds lofty.”

  “It’s true,” he defended himself. “Culinary artists can’t live in a vacuum.”

  “I believe you, Liam.”

  “Please do,” he said, momentarily appeased. “Anyway, I told her I needed to see different restaurants before I found a place to live—not technically a lie, just the omission of a couple of details.”

  “Like Edward.”

  “You didn’t want me leading her here, did you?”

  “She’ll worry until she knows you have a job.”

  “You’d think. But the calls have slowed down. We haven’t talked since before I got to Devon.”

  “Does that worry you?”

  “Not particularly,” he said and yawned. “Margaret McGowan Reid can take care of herself just fine.”

  I might have argued that my mother valued family, having always professed to wanting five children before age and miscarriage got in the way. I might have argued that she had grown her career to take the place of the children she had lost, that she had lost my father and now Liam. And me before that.

  But she knew where I lived, I reasoned, letting my open palm absorb the vibration of Hex’s purr
as a palliative to upset. My return address was clearly displayed on the cards I had sent. More than once, I had considered adding my new cell number, very small and unobtrusive, maybe on the back of the card along with the artist’s information—the cards I sent were originals, usually done by someone I knew—so that if she was interested she could call. But I always decided against it. I hadn’t wanted to wait for a call that might not come.

  Not wanting to fall further into the quicksand of all that, I said, “Okay, then, if it isn’t Mom calling, and I assume it wasn’t Lizzie, because I saw that dumb smile on your face—”

  “Dumb smile?”

  “Bored to death but not knowing how to get rid of her. You wouldn’t give her your number.”

  “Hell no.”

  “Who then?”

  He was suddenly sheepish. “I did give it to Erica Kahn. Do you know her?”

  I tried to place her, coming up only with a sweet thing who had been in Devon for no more than a year or two. “Personal trainer at the sports center?”

  “Yes. Amazing body.”

  “And a nice person, I hear.” My eyes touched his phone. “So why didn’t you answer?”

  “Because that wasn’t her. It was someone I used to know.”

  His guilty look said more. “Used to date?”

  “It totally ended when I left,” he swore, defensive again, “and it was mutual. I don’t know why she keeps calling.”

  “Maybe you should answer and find out?” I asked, remembering what Kevin had told me about Edward not so long ago. Confront him, he had said, so I did. It ended badly—well, not badly in the way that said good sex was never bad, but badly in the sense of emotional clarity.

  And look at me now. Sitting on the floor. Using my cat to center myself and not quite making it. Emotional clarity gone.

  Who was I to advise Liam?

  I needed a cup of herb tea but was too weary to make it. Gently dislodging Hex from my lap, I managed to stand and head for the stairs.

  “Where are you going?” Liam asked, only then sitting forward.

  “To bed.”

  “But I need to know about Erica.”

  “Not tonight.”

  “She is adorable and available and toned. She may be the best thing I’ve met in months. In years.”

  “So call her,” I said and felt my own cell jingle against my hip. At this hour, on this night, I didn’t doubt who it was.

  16

  He tried calling first. When I didn’t answer, he texted. I ignored the first few dings while I got ready for bed. But something about removing my makeup and seeing the scar told me sleep wouldn’t come unless I had a silence that was totally Edward-free.

  So when more dings came minutes later, I stared at the phone.

  Call me, said one text, and a second, Are you home? When the third said, Are you safe? like I might have driven into a tree, I texted back, Yes. Home. Going to sleep.

  His response was instant. I do. Love you.

  Did, I corrected.

  My phone rang. I picked up, just wanting to put it to rest.

  “Do, Mackenzie,” he said without preamble. “Do. I do love you. I tried not to, but how do you stop something like that?”

  “With murder?”

  “Where? When? What murder?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I don’t. There’s no way, no way I’ll ever believe you wanted that accident to happen, so can we agree not to bring it up again?”

  I sighed. “Tonight.”

  “Forever,” he countered. “Look. Tragedies happen. How we handle them is a test of character. So I failed. I needed someone to blame, and there you were, happy to be blamed, and where did it get us? Divorced. Living alone. Miserable.”

  “I’m not miserable.”

  “Is that why you live alone—why you don’t date—why you freeze when the subject of being a good mother comes up?”

  “I don’t—”

  “Why didn’t Grace see, someone asked, and it triggered a memory you couldn’t handle.”

  “It didn’t—”

  “Then you zoned out, maybe remembering the accident or—or the time Lily grabbed the scissors and cut her finger instead of paper because you’d left the room for half a minute because I was yelling for your help from the other side of the house—or the time I sat her on the kitchen counter and she pulled a knife from the butcher block in the few seconds I was pouring her milk.”

  “No—”

  “And when you couldn’t breathe in the truck just now—is that what happy people do?”

  I hung up, then silenced the phone so I wouldn’t hear it ring. Tossing it to the foot of the bed, I climbed under the covers.

  The thing vibrated once, twice, three times, then stopped.

  I turned off the light, rolled onto my side, and punched at the pillow.

  When he tried again, the lit screen penetrated even my closed lids. Bolting up, I flipped it over to hide the light. Hiding. Yes, I was. And no, I wasn’t happy when I had to deal with the past.

  But the past wouldn’t go away until I forced it to, I realized. So I snatched up the phone, clicked in, and said a tired, “Leave it, Edward. I can’t deal.”

  He didn’t speak, but I knew he was there. I could hear his breath, rapid but gradually slowing until I felt him beside me, like he used to always be. No, I hadn’t had many friends growing up, and while that changed as soon as I got to college and found people who shared my interests, it wasn’t until I met Edward that I’d felt complete.

  It was a tapestry. Life was. A tapestry. Needlework had never been my medium, but the metaphor fit. Life was a bundle of loose threads, really just a flimsy canvas until a few, strong, basic cords were woven in. My parents had been two of those cords. Liam was one. Lily another. And Edward.

  Quietly he said, “Neither can I. Deal, I mean. I’ve really botched up this whole thing. I’m sorry I said what I did after the accident. I’m sorry I thought that erasing this part of my life would work. I’m sorry I didn’t call you before I moved here, and I’m sorry I said what I did tonight in front of Kevin, but I’m not sorry for the words. I am sorry we’re talking on the phone right now, because I need to say those words again and keep saying them until they sink in. Christ, Mackenzie, you’re stubborn.”

  “Damaged,” I breathed.

  “I heard that, babe, and you are so wrong. What you are is human.”

  I wanted to argue, but didn’t have the strength.

  Or maybe I didn’t want to argue.

  Maybe I wanted to believe what he said, because I kept the phone at my ear.

  “And here’s something else,” he said. “I need to find a place for Lily in my life. I tried removing her. I mean, hell, she’s dead, right? Only I can’t just say goodbye and walk away. You can’t just wipe out someone you made. She’ll always be part of me.”

  A thread in the tapestry, I was thinking, but he continued to speak.

  “When you left, I packed up my pictures, all those ones that you made frames for—hell, even your frames were artistic. But I thought it’d be easier to move on if I didn’t have to see them every day—you know, to see her—us—to see what I’d lost. So what I have now is a big hole where the best of the past used to be. What I have is a carton—cartons, plural—filled with photos that I want to put out but can’t.”

  “You can.”

  “Do you? I didn’t see any photos at your place, not downstairs, not in the bedroom.”

  Pushing the covers aside, I slid from the bed to the floor, just far enough back to see the green velvet box underneath. I couldn’t actually see that it was green or velvet or even a box. The night was too dark and the light from my phone too small. But I could have been blind, and I’d have known exactly where it lay. “It’s too painful for me.”

  “And it isn’t for me? But how does a cut heal if you don’t give it air to scab over?”

  The question hung for a minute before he said, “I want to put person
al pictures in my office, only I can’t, because people might ask about Lily, and I’m not sure I can hold it together enough to explain. And then there are ones of you and Lily, and you and me, and the shot of just you that your friend Juan-Louis took right after we met—remember that one?”

  I did. Oh, God. Edward had adored that one. I had surprised him with it for our first anniversary. Lily was barely six months old, I was still carrying baby fat, still sleep-deprived, and I wanted him to remember me in better times. The vanity of that seemed ridiculous now, but it had been a lifetime ago.

  Now, folding myself forward, I extended a hand, but couldn’t quite reach the box.

  The voice in my ear said, “You have bangs and different eyes now, but the face is the same Mackenzie for anyone with half a brain to see, so I can’t take the risk, because you made me promise—”

  “I get the point,” I said and straightened.

  But he wasn’t done. “Do you? I want to be happy again, Maggie. I want to be whole. Is that too much to ask? Tragedies happen, but don’t we make them worse by dragging them on and on?”

  “I can’t forget her.”

  “Neither can I, that’s my point. I need to make a place for Lily in my life. I need to make a place for us. I want to be able to laugh without feeling guilty.”

  I didn’t comment. Couldn’t. He wasn’t saying anything my therapist hadn’t said back when I was seeing her, but coming from Edward, it held more weight.

  The silence lengthened. Finally, worriedly, he said, “Are you there?”

  “Yes.”

  I heard the creak of the door when one of the cats came into the room. I heard Liam’s footsteps pass by on his way to the loft. I heard a coyote, distant but haunting.

  I didn’t hear Edward. He was waiting for me to speak.

  “Okay,” I finally managed.

  “Okay, what?”

  “Okay, speak.”

  “I have been. I need to know what you think.”

  “What I think is that you’re the one with the ideas, so you need to suggest one.”